“Walking down the street, I’ve been called Jesus, Rasputin, Fagan, ZZ Tops, even Forty Coats, it depends on the generation,” says John McNally, the face of beards in Ireland.

Peter the Great patterned the city after Amsterdam, and even though St Petersburg is newer than New York by almost 100 years, in some places it feels a thousand years old — a few buildings seem to be a cross between Roman ruins and German palaces. The building walls, usually between three and four feet thick, host basement cafés and restaurants where you can’t get a mobile phone signal. The walls are moist, and smell like rivers, because the city was built on marshland.

Former top jockey Tommy Carmody made a dream return to the training ranks, ten years after his last winner, when Miss Mediator landed the opening bookings@dundalkstadium.com Fillies Maiden in Dundalk last night.

George Clooney’s quip about the Kerry actor’s manhood sees the Irishman join a long line of well-endowed leading men, says Ed Power

Captain Cook, Master of the Seas

MI6 HAS lifted somewhat the veil of secrecy that has surrounded its operations for the past century with the publication of the first authorised history of the service.

I THINK we need to be very clear about a couple of things.

A plane believed to be carrying former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic landed today in the Netherlands, where a United Nations war crimes tribunal will try him for genocide.

Other Russian exiles in London may be feeling nervous after the apparent poisoning of former security agent Alexander Litvinenko, an expert on Russian affairs said.

Celebrity scourge Dennis Pennis is to make a TV comeback more than four years after he was killed off.

Rod Steiger, the beefy, intense actor who won the Oscar as best actor of 1967 for his role as the unrelenting Southern police chief in In the Heat of the Night, died today. He was 78.